Stupidity from two Denominations

RELIGIOUS leaders have used their Easter sermons and messages to condemn the rise of atheism, with Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen describing the philosophy as an “assault on God”.

“As we can see by the sheer passion and virulence of the atheist – they seem to hate the Christian God – we are not dealing here with cool philosophy up against faith without a brain,” Dr Jensen told worshippers.

“Atheism is every bit of a religious commitment as Christianity itself.

“It represents the latest version of the human assault on God, born out of resentment that we do not in fact rule the world and that God calls on us to submit our lives to him.

“It is a form of idolatry in which we worship ourselves.”

No, it isn’t and the Archbishop’s generalisations are as offensive as generalising about Christians.

Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher has likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to “collective violence” suffered by the Jews.

Yes blaming the Catholic Church for covering up child abuse, is just the same as the pogroms.

“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” the preacher said.

Quoting from the letter from the friend, who wasn’t identified by Cantalamessa, the preacher said that he was following ”’with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world.”‘

“The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,”‘ Cantalamessa said his friend wrote him.

Catholics as a whole of course have no responsibility or collective guilt over what a minority of priests did.

But that is different from the hierarchy of the church. In many countries, the hierarchy covered up the child abuse. Priests were left free to abuse, and their crimes were not reported to authorities. Fot that there is a collective responsibility – not by all Catholics, but by the Church hierarchy which in almost every country reacted in the same way.

Shunda barunda

“It is, for example, commonly considered to be “a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods”. Agnosticism can fit into this category. Whether it does depends upon how you’re choosing to set your terms.”

Bullshit, they are terms to describe a particular intellectual position on the existence or not of a supernatural cause to the universe, they are not interchangeable any more than light or dark are.
This is a typical attitude of the intellectual elite to redefine their argument when it is shown to have a weakness, Richard Dawkins is a shameless user of such tactics.
Choosing “your set of terms” indeed, sounds like the “God of the gaps” in atheist form to me.

JiveKitty

Call bullshit all you want. I backed up my point with an easily findable and commonly accepted definition. Just stick “define: atheism” into Google and you’ll find how you want to define atheism as well as the definition I gave. Note also that “common definition” and “commonly accepted” do not mean “only”. They mean that many accept the definition as given.

I do accept, however, that even amongst atheists, this idea contested, but as I said, it comes down to how you want to define your terms. Words do have somewhat variable definitions, and atheists have different perspectives on atheism, strange as those ideas may be to you, Shunda. Much like someone like Redbaiter will likely have a different idea of what it is to be conservative than say, David Cameron, despite both (I think? Sorry if I’ve got this wrong, Redbaiter) being conservatives, there are different perspectives within atheism about what atheism means. Accepting this reality is not some shameless tactic of an intellectual elite, it’s an understanding and acceptance that things often aren’t as simple as some would like.

Shunda barunda

“Why does everything need to have an “evolutionary purpose”? It doesn’t. Evolution may be the menas that bgot us here, but it is not the sum of us.”

Still odd don’t you think?
We discover and develop the means to make sound sound like something that creates an emotional reaction so strong that all humans are affected by it.
We discover that certain frequencies of sound can be strung together like a universal language that can only be understood and appreciated by intelligent beings.
Sounds like music is a gift from somewhere, perhaps an interaction with an intelligence beyond our own comprehension in a way that transcends human language.

Shunda barunda

“it’s an understanding and acceptance that things often aren’t as simple as some would like”

No it isn’t, it is as stupid as arguing that black is now white if YOU really feel it is.

Arguing that a term to describe a position of “don’t know” actually means “do know” is a dishonest attempt at redefining the debate to favour your position.
Are you one of those post modernists I mentioned earlier?

JiveKitty

Shunda, not knowing doesn’t rule out not believing. Consider it dishonest and tar me with names of things you apparently don’t look fondly upon if you feel like it. It doesn’t do anything to invalidate my point.

slightlyrighty

In all of this we have seemingly forgotten that the person who is, according to the Catholic Church, God’s representative on earth, who is blessed with Papal infallibility, has been found to be implicit in the covering up of the worst sort of conduct by those who also call themselves men of god.

This begs the question, to what end?

Where did it profit the catholic church to systematically conceal these issues? Did they so believe in the power of the position they granted themselves that they felt immune from the repercussions of their actions?

In doing so, have they failed to understand the humanity of those they had irrecoverably wronged?

Atheism has, in existing, allowed us to openly challenge those who have claimed divine authority over the masses, and in a small percentage of cases, abused that authority. That the church did not adequately deal with these issues at the time, is it’s own failure. To compare the current scandal with the worst of anti-semitism, is yet another black mark.

kiwitoffee

JiveKitty

@slightlyrighty: Papal infallibility in only very few circumstances.

As to why the abuse was covered up, perhaps it was because of a short-sighted belief that it would not eventually be uncovered and tarnish the reputation of the Church. I am of the opinion though, that the Catholic Church is more about retaining power and influence than helping people.

Shunda barunda

“Consider it dishonest and tar me with names of things you apparently don’t look fondly upon if you feel like it. It doesn’t do anything to invalidate my point.”

And what is your point? That the changing nature of the english language somehow validates your belief that agnosticism and atheism are now interchangeable?
One is simply morphing into the other if that is the case, why don’t we just agree to call it “Dawkinism”, it would be more honest than hijacking yet another word for use by the social elite.

Fletch

In all of this we have seemingly forgotten that the person who is, according to the Catholic Church, God’s representative on earth, who is blessed with Papal infallibility, has been found to be implicit in the covering up of the worst sort of conduct by those who also call themselves men of god.

Actually that is total bollocks, as this articleby the judge who actually tried the case against Father Murphy writes.

Some snippets –

Since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth. The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

[One of my intents is] to assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

In the summer of 1998, I ordered Father Murphy to be present at a deposition at the chancery in Milwaukee. I received, soon after, a letter from his doctor that he was in frail health and could travel not more than 20 miles (Boulder Junction to Milwaukee would be about 276 miles). A week later, Father Murphy died of natural causes in a location about 100 miles from his home

With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people. “ Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.”

The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct.

In the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy. Father Murphy, however, died only two days later and

the fact is that on the day he died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this.

Second, with regard to the role of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in this matter, I have no reason to believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information.

OK, so Father Murphy, according to the judge that presided over the case, was still a defendant in a criminal trial on the day he died. So much for his having been pardoned by then Cardinal Ratzinger.
It’s a beat-up by the media pure and simple. And why?

To discredit the public moral witness of the Church, that “inconvenient voice” of truth in our time.

The salacious reporting on clerical sex abuse ( as if it were limited to only Roman Catholic clergy) has been given a prominence greater than the massacres of Christians happening right now in India and Iraq. Moreover, the term “clerical sex abuse” is often misleadingly equated with “pedophilia” to whip up even more public outrage. It doesn’t take the political acumen of an Edmund Burke to wonder why the Catholic Church has been singled out for this treatment.

While no one denies the wrongdoing and the harm caused by a small minority of priests, their misconduct has been used to undermine the reputations of the overwhelming majority of clergy who live holy quiet lives in their parishes, tending to their flocks. These good men have been smeared with the same poisonous ink.

The brutal reality is that there are an estimated 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse in the United States today. Of these, between 40 and 60 percent were abused by a family member (for the most part uncles, cousins, stepfathers and live-in boyfriends). Carol Shakeshaft and Audrey Cohan have produced a study showing that 5 percent were molested by school teachers, while the New York Times published a survey showing that fewer than 2% of the offenders were Catholic priests. But to read the papers, it would seem that Catholic clergy hold a monopoly in child molestation.

Burke’s explanation for the furious anti-clericalism of yore could have been written today: The denigration of the clergy was “to teach them [the people] to persecute their own pastors….by raising a disgust and horror of the clergy.”
If Burke were alive today, he would perhaps discern another motive behind the selective assaults on Catholic clergy, besides designs on Church property: namely to destroy the credibility of a powerful moral voice in public debate. The most recent example concerns the heated battle over the health care reform bill.

The vocal opposition of the United States Bishops’ conference (particularly in regard to tax-payer -funded abortion) has proved especially annoying to the proponents of the legislation. As the final vote approaches, the clerical sex abuse drumbeat has risen to a frenzy.

Thank you big blouse your 6.52pm comment just won me $100 bucks. Your pathological hatred of me is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo predicable.Hi coward still a yellowback loon with a huge d4j problem. What a deranged and sad creep. Take Tuffy for a walk.

eszett

Father Brundage, who is now working in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, posted an essay this week saying he was never informed that the trial of Father Murphy had been halted.

He also said that he had been misquoted in both The New York Times and The Associated Press. In an interview on Wednesday, Father Brundage acknowledged that he had never been quoted in any Times articles about the Murphy case — and the paper did not misquote him. He said he was misquoted in an Associated Press article that was posted temporarily on the Times Web site, and he mistakenly attributed that to The Times.

He said the documents show that the Vatican had encouraged the Milwaukee Archdiocese to halt the trial, but they did not use strong language and actually order a halt. He said that he never saw the letter from Archbishop Weakland abating the trial until it appeared on the Times Web site last week.

“The only possible explanation I can come up with is that Archbishop Weakland withheld the letter, knowing the reaction I would have had,” Father Brundage said.

Father Brundage said he would have been appalled because he was absolutely convinced that Father Murphy should be put on trial, because, “This was a horrendous case.”

JiveKitty

Shunda: “And what is your point? That the changing nature of the english language somehow validates your belief that agnosticism and atheism are now interchangeable?
One is simply morphing into the other if that is the case, why don’t we just agree to call it “Dawkinism”, it would be more honest than hijacking yet another word for use by the social elite.”

Never said they were interchangeable. I believe one comes under the definition of the other. You can be an atheist and not agnostic, but you cannot be an agnostic and not atheist. Agnosticism would hold you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God, a god or gods. As such, an agnostic does not believe in God, a god or gods. Hence atheist: “a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods”. A “lack of belief in the existence of God or gods” does not necessarily imply that the atheist believes there is no God or gods. See the logic? These are not mutually incompatible terms.

If you want to bitch about my use of language, consider where the term atheist comes from. It comes from the Greek “atheos”, which means “without gods”. This term does not imply one believes there are no gods. It implies a lack of gods/lack of belief in gods. Subtle distinction.

As for calling it Dawkinism, I don’t think that would be appropriate as Dawkins is not representative of all atheists. He espouses a view many may hold, but it is a specific view coming from a specific strand of atheist thought.

I am not saying, however, that there are atheists who do not believe there is no God, a god or gods, as this is not the case. The atheists who believe this, however, believe this because they believe the onus of proof for the existence of God, a god or gods is on those who believe. Where there is a lack of evidence for a belief, there is reason to disbelieve and no reason to believe.

slightlyrighty

If a teacher is caught molesting their charges, that person is held to account by the system.

Catholic Priests, who have taken vows of celebacy, have been protected by the organision that gave them the power over their victims, when they should have been working for the victims.

Clergy who molest children are not limited to the catholic church. Grahem Capill for example. But the piety put forward in defence of the action taken by the church then does ring somewhat hollow now, especially as the catholic church does not have the stranglehold in certain countries it once had, such as Ireland.

It is the hypocrisy of the issue at hand, when those who fervently preach “Thou Shalt Not……” in the name of the church and God, stoop to the lowest standard of behaviour, and destroy the lives of those they vowed to help.

Chuck Bird

ZenTiger, I was late getting back last night so I will address you points now.

I am not anti-Catholic or anti-Christian. I think modern Christianity does more good than harm be a considerable degree. However, I was appalled by comments from Bill Donohue, the head of the influential Catholic League. He stated that the priest who allegedly sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin did not engage in pedophilia because ‘the vast majority of the victims [were] post-pubescent.”http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0331/catholic-league-boys-pubescent/
As I said in my earlier post it sounds to like this creep is trying somehow trying to minimise or justify the actions of these sick priests. A mature adult initiating sex with children under 16 it morally wrong and a criminal offence no matter what the perversion is called.
You state, ‘Front page headlines could have blared “Is the Government making the same mistakes the Catholic Church did?” Have we learned nothing?’

You point to a couple of cases where the police have failed to use discretion properly. The first case got a lot of publicity. Anne Tolley, then Opposition MP tried to draw attention to the case. I disgusted that the Commissioner for Children, Cindy Kiro supported the police. I cannot recall the second case you mention. It is only in the last few years that it has become a criminal offence for an adult woman to have sex with an underage boy. So if the event happened a long time ago there would be nothing the police could have done.

As I said I am not anti Catholic but the cover up of sexual abuse by people very high up in the Catholic was and is very wrong. Many Catholics are the ones protesting.

Attempts to minimise the cover up or make comparisons such as you make or the comparison to “collective violence” suffered by the Jews probably harm the Catholic Church.

I could equally point to several NZ cases where sexual abuse by State run facilities also indicate cover-ups and protection of the offender at the expense of the victim. Even so, there appear to be many “out of court settlements” that seem to bypass media scrutiny, no doubt to minimise publicity for the victim, but has the unfortunate side effect of hiding the problem. I’ll save it for another time, as it is not appropriate in this thread.

What perhaps is interesting to understand in the Fr Murphy case is why the police and prosecutors failed to act when this was reported to them in the 50’s, when the abuse started. I’ve seen reference to this, but then no explanation on why they did nothing.

Also, I point to similar cases in NZ, and you say “the police failed to use discretion properly”. No kidding!

You then say: The first case got a lot of publicity. Anne Tolley, then Opposition MP tried to draw attention to the case. I disgusted that the Commissioner for Children, Cindy Kiro supported the police.

It seems like as long as the public is outraged, even without action, we can let it slide? Well, the Catholic Church is getting a lot of publicity for failing to bring Fr Murphy to trial (overwhelming evidence apparently), and the secular authorities have a free pass for failing to act on reports of sexual abuse (insufficient evidence perhaps?). Letting one slide and not the other appears hypocritical.

Also, I don’t think Donahue is trying to minimise the crime – we all know the crime and we all agree it is terrible. His statement was partly motivated by the media attempting to sensationalize all aspects of the issue. I guess he’s also convinced it is an issue of homosexuality. Some are convinced it’s caused by celibacy. Stating that opinion does not minimise the case, surely? Are you saying people that put down the sexual abuse by Priests as caused by celibacy as making disgusting comments that minimise the crime?

On the other hand, people who classify it Pedophilia may not care if it doesn’t actually conform to the medical definition of pedophilia. This term suits the sensationalism of the papers, because it instantly signifies a terrible crime.

You may not care what the name of the crime is, but the homosexual lobby do not want the American public to label predator priests as “homosexual priests”, as it would do damage to their brand. This is why such topics get so well flogged in the media. The Vatican looked at 3000 serious cases of priest abuse, spanning a 50 year period and discovered 10% of the cases could be properly classed pedophilia, and 60% were homosexual relations with teen age boys (leaving 30% being heterosexual contact). Perhaps Donahue was reacting to those statistics?

Personally, I’m tending to side with you – the crime is abhorrent no matter the “category” it falls into, and the key issue is simply “child abuse” being anyone under the age of consent. Around those issues are the betrayal of trust implicit in a position of authority and the culture of ignoring the crime and/or failing to report it to the secular authorities. I note there has been much progress in the Church over ensuring this does not happen again – I hope the cases the media continue to thrust in the limelight continue to be years old. However, I see new cases making the paper all the time now for secular institutions. They would do well to ensure the lessons learned from the Catholic Church are applied to themselves as well, after all, this has to primarily be around protecting our future children because the past cannot be undone.